Offenbach is a socially very diverse city, one of the most diverse in Germany. This is what listeners experience in Day X, a five-part podcast by New York Timesthat takes place entirely in Germany, more precisely in German right-wing extremism. It’s about right-wing chat groups in the security authorities, about a hidden weapon at Vienna Airport, about the NSU and its legacy. The beginning of the story is Franco A., the Bundeswehr soldier who had a double existence as a Syrian refugee for a year, and which is currently being tried in Frankfurt. He is accused of planning terrorist attacks on politicians and wanting to blame the Syrian he invented for the crimes.
Katrin Bennhold, head of the Berlin office of New York Times, was able to conduct an exclusive interview with Franco A. She first met him in a Berlin restaurant, then Franco A. invited her and two podcast producers to New York Times into the house in Offenbach where he grew up. He had himself photographed there in the packed “prepper” cellar between his army uniforms. The conversation with Franco A. appeared as an article a few months ago, in the podcast you can now hear the alleged right-wing extremist from the Bundeswehr in the original sound.
Franco A. speaks in the podcast only in the subjunctive, Bennhold provides the facts
Day X tells the story of the new German right-wing extremism in a total of five episodes. The title is given by the right-wing chat groups in which members of the security authorities fantasized about a day X, a collapse of the social order in Germany. Franco A. can be heard in Day X fiddling around, portraying his actions as harmless and misunderstood, Katrin Bennhold always provides the reality comparison. Franco A. speaks only in the subjunctive: If he had stalked Anetta Kahane, the Jewish chairman of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, in Berlin, he would have only wanted to talk to her.
How does a country deal with the history of Germany, so the bigger question of the podcast, with the dangers of right-wing extremism?
Especially since this danger, as the NSU and its numerous murders and attempted murders, its bomb attacks and robbery showed, was not only overlooked for years, but also, as the chat groups and the Franco A. case prove, also comes from the core of the German security authorities. “This is a cancer”, says Stephan J. Kramer in the podcast, who was General Secretary of the Central Council of Jews until 2014 and is now head of the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Right-wing extremism and its ideas are rooted like cancer in Germany.
Have a say in Day X including Claudia Roth and Anetta Kahane, both of whom were on Franco A.’s list of enemies. Also the lawyer for the NSU victims Seda Başay-Yildiz, a former teacher of Franco A., a taxi driver from Offenbach. With the view from afar the New York Times and the translation into English makes a lot of what we already know from the local reports seem even more insane, even more disconcerting.
Day X, New York Times, Spotify, Apple Podcasts.